The opening of 'Voices of a Distant Star' was brimming with sci-fi atmosphere — especially that stunning mech design.
Jing Yu's 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' fans were instantly hyped. They were already speculating about how much a figure of that mecha would cost, should it be turned into a collectible model.
"The madman's a genius."
"Let's gooo!"
"No need for more — just that robot's design alone makes this short worth it."
"Only the madman can make robot battles this intense. The copycat shows from other stations are just painful to watch."
"Okay, that's not totally fair. Some of those other shows actually put in real effort. Their problem isn't laziness — it's that their writing and budget can't compare. Even if they made a solid 7/10 show, they'd still get roasted. If it's not better than the madman's, it's getting flamed."
With short films, audiences were a bit more casual in their expectations.
But as 'Voices of a Distant Star' progressed, the discussions in the fan group began to quiet down.
The story frequently cuts between scenes of Terao Noboru and Mikako Nagamine, back when they were still living on Blue Star.
They were still just middle schoolers. One afternoon, as they walked home together, Noboru chatted freely about everything under the sun, while Mikako seemed distracted.
Under a gray sky and a drizzle of rain, the two of them — like a couple — hid under the eaves and talked about their views on life, values, and the world.
It was youthful and naïve, but the romantic tension pouring out of the screen was palpable.
Finally, Mikako turned to Noboru and said:
She had been selected by the United Fleet and would soon be leaving Blue Star.
That was the beginning of the story.
The next scene — Mars.
The distance between Mars and Blue Star constantly varies: at its closest, 55 million kilometers; at its farthest, 400 million kilometers.
In light-years, that's insignificant — you measure it in seconds.
Light takes 183 to 1333 seconds to travel that distance.
When Mikako and Noboru send text messages to each other, and without any sci-fi tech like quantum entanglement — just standard electromagnetic waves — this is the absolute speed limit of the universe.
At this point, the audience didn't feel anything too heavy.
A few minutes of delay? No big deal. As long as the emotions are real, it's totally bearable.
The following scenes showed Mikako training in her mecha on Mars, with stunning visuals in the backdrop.
The story moved quickly, with much of it narrated through Mikako's voiceovers, reading out the texts she was sending Noboru.
Millions of miles away from home, he, on that distant planet, was Mikako's emotional anchor.
Next stop — Jupiter.
In the story, Jupiter's farthest distance from Blue Star is given as 630 million kilometers.
Even at the speed of light, it would take over 30 minutes to reach. If you drove there at 100 km/h non-stop, no eating or sleeping, it'd take 700 years.
At this point, the audience started to feel the emotional weight.
Now it took an hour for a single message round-trip — for lovers, that was no small thing.
The story continued, told through their fragmented message exchanges.
Jupiter's colossal lightning storms, its massive storm-eyes the size of entire planets that had raged for centuries…
Noboru, now a high school student, never lets his phone out of reach.
But the girl beside him was gone.
A text buzzed his phone awake from sleep.
Mikako: "We're finally setting out from Jupiter to Pluto. It looks like message delivery times will be even longer now. Because our movements must be kept secret, this message… was sent by me six months ago."
Noboru's frustration deepened.
What had started as texts every few minutes…
Then became 30-minute delays…
And then…
It wasn't just distance anymore — military secrecy meant they hadn't communicated in half a year.
Back in the fan chat:
"Something feels off… Bros, how is this short film already this painful?"
"The madman crammed eight minutes of material that could be three to five episodes of a drama."
"Damn, this premise is amazing — why didn't he just make it into a full-length show?"
"It's not like they don't have the budget — fifty million would've covered a whole season. Doing this as a short is such a waste."
"The universe is too damn big, man. This isn't a long-distance relationship — it's an interplanetary one!"
"They're heading to Pluto now. A single text from there to Blue Star would take over five hours to arrive. That's insane."
Pluto — the dark edge of the solar system.
Cold. Lightless.
Even sunlight takes seven hours to reach it.
And it was there that Mikako Nagamine encountered traces of the aliens the United Fleet had been chasing all this time.
After a fierce battle, the mothership used the faster-than-light technology recovered from the aliens to escape.
Mikako, hanging by a thread, managed to defeat an enemy unit and return to the ship.
But the mothership was preparing for an FTL jump — to a star system one light-year away.
Before they left, she never got the chance to send even one last message to Terao Noboru from Pluto.
Of course, the story wasn't without logical flaws.
For example, Blue Star's government had acquired alien tech that allowed interstellar jumps, leaping light-years instantly.
And yet, their communication systems were still using primitive electromagnetic waves.
But that was the foundation of the story's setting — and honestly, the audience's science literacy wasn't high enough to notice.
From Mikako's perspective, she had just made a one-second jump.
But to her and Noboru, the actual distance was 13,477,536,000,000 kilometers — over one light-year.
At that distance, a single SMS would take over a year to reach Earth — and one teenager's phone.
Despair.
The despair on Yu Youqing's face as she portrayed Mikako… it radiated from the screen and pierced the hearts of every viewer.
Zhong Qianle stared in silence, unable to even sip her soda.
Twelve minutes in, only two characters had appeared.
But just from this brief runtime… her chest was already tight with emotion.
What is this?!
What kind of carbon-based lifeform could come up with this kind of long-distance relationship?
Jing Yu, the madman, must be cursed!
She sat upright, staring at Mikako sitting in the cockpit — her heart sinking further.
Even now, Mikako was still trying to send a message to Noboru. Her fingers danced wildly across the screen, not knowing how to phrase it, how to explain…
From now on, a single round-trip message would take two years.
Assuming a human lifespan of 100 years, and assuming they always politely waited for a reply before responding…
They would only exchange about 50 messages in an entire lifetime — before death.